Windows

General discussion

Backing up Hard Drive

I have a 540 MB hard drive with DDO. I want to back up the files, repartition and reformat, and then place the data back on the disk as it was before. Will simply selecting all of the files and folders and copying them to another location suffice, or do I need to do something else, like create and image of the disk. Give me some ideas on how I can accomplish this. Thanks.

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Selecting the files, moving them, wiping out pc, moving back files will not restore the pc to the way it was.

2 programs I recommend for imaging:

Powerquest Drive Image Pro 4.0 (very easy to make an image)

Norton Ghost ( a little more difficult )

Defrag your hard drive first, then use one of these programs to "Image" your drive onto another hard drive. Then you can fdisk you drive, wiping out all the data, and resize it to what you need. If it is fat16, fat32, the image is scalable to where you can change the size when imaging back. If it is NTFS, you can only make your partitions bigger.

Yes, if this is only a data disk, you can copy them aside before reformatting. If it's anything else, it's best to make an image (DriveImage, Ghost, or Acronis TrueImage <a good deal cheaper than the two, and cake to use&gt.But if all you want is resizing, you don't have to copy/move a byte. Just use some reliable partitioning software, like Partition Expert, TrueImage, or Partition Magic. If you're feeling totally unsure, you may image the disk before, but really, there's no need to.All of the above programs have VERY good help so there's no point giving step-by-step advice, just go with the flow and you'll be fine.best of luck,

I assume that you have Windows 9x on old system. The cheapest solution to do it is to download shareware called XXCOPY.EXE. Then you install bare OS on new drive. Select new drive as slave and install it on old system. After boot, go to command prompt and type: XXCOPY C: /CLONE.Boot system with new disk and everything should be fine.

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